Flu vaccine and Covid-19, the link not found

Audio 03:49

The manufacturing processes of a vaccine are often long and delicate.

iStock / Neznam

By: Sophie Malibeaux

8 min

In France, three quarters of people at risk should be vaccinated against seasonal flu, at least this is the goal that the health authorities would like to achieve.

But the course may be difficult to keep, especially because of the disinformation that rages on this subject on social networks.

Publicity

Online media are circulating on social networks the results of questionable studies on the fact that the flu vaccination is responsible for an increase in deaths linked to Covid-19 in the elderly.

A story that goes against the public health policy adopted to prevent epidemics of seasonal flu.

These are infoxes spread in conspiratorial circles under pseudo-scientific rags, which pose a major risk to public health.

We can cite for example this

, relayed on Twitter, mentioning a report withdrawn from the internet 10 days after its publication before being corrected.

The same paper goes into detail on a study supposedly published in the American science magazine

, but the link actually refers to an article in

which researches viruses other than SARS-CoV-2.

Finally, the article refers to an " 

 " called " 

 ", but its author is not an epidemiologist.

He works on the forest ecosystem at a Mexican university.

Unfounded allegations

To find out if the elderly were taking a risk by being vaccinated against the flu, we contacted Professor Bouchaud of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, who - he - is an infectious disease specialist.

According to him, “ 

 "

Former newspaper turned into disinformation site

The article on the France Soir site belongs to the infox register, in the category of publications propagated on the internet by the anti-vax lobby.

This is a movement that has experienced a significant upsurge in recent months on social networks, from conspiracy pharmacies, drawing on the abundant production of American ultra-right networks, as evidenced by the section

newspaper

on October 1, 2020.

In reality, France Soir - now transformed into a website - has nothing to do with the great daily founded by Pierre Lazareff at the end of the war in 1944. Since October 2019, the very last journalists of the editorial staff have been dismissed for economic reasons.

Only the title remains on the internet.

The article mentioned in this column is signed " 

 ".

Its authors are anonymous.

Examining the website's online production, most of the articles are in denial of the health crisis and develop the scenario of a planetary manipulation organized by corrupt elites.

The arguments of the health authorities to encourage vaccination

The priority in this month of October 2020 for the health authorities

is to avoid the congestion of hospitals by reducing the cases of severe flu.

It is then to facilitate diagnoses for doctors who are faced with patients who sometimes have similar symptoms, in terms of fever and headaches.

And then it is finally a question of limiting the use of anti-Covid tests so that people simply suffering from the flu do not also clutter the laboratories, already busy detecting the coronavirus.

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Infox

• Social networks

• Coronavirus

• Influenza

• Health and medicine